


The Thirteenth Emissary

by thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Developing Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Sith Empire, Sith Obi-Wan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 07:33:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12031158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: In a universe where the Sith rule the galaxy, Sith Master Maul chooses Initiate Obi-Wan Kenobi to join their most prestigious faction: the Emissaries.But with the Jedi threat always around the corner and Maul's relationship with Kenobi growing ever more strained, that choice comes into question.





	The Thirteenth Emissary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamiflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/gifts).



He's holding a kyber crystal in his hand. 

It's an unused one and so it's a clear one, one that hasn't made up its mind what colour to be yet and it hasn't had a colour imposed upon it, either. It's undecided. It's neither one thing nor the other. The only thing he knows it is for certain is the first thing and the last thing that Obi-Wan Kenobi ever gave him. 

"Are you going to use that?" Ahsoka asks him, flopping down onto a couch across the room there in the Emissaries' living quarters that the thirteen of them are meant to share. "Because all I ever see you do is look at it and if you don't want it, I'll have it. My Jar'Kai's getting rusty and who wants to trek all the way back to Ilum to pick up a new crystal?"

He ignores her pointedly, sitting there cross-legged on the floor with the crystal in his hand, and she shrugs and stretches out on her back and makes a show of rearranging her lekku as if nonchalant. She doesn't need a new kyber crystal because there's nothing wrong with her second blade and her Jar'Kai is far from rusty; she's fishing for information and Maul knows it. She's good, he thinks, and she'll be even better when she's completed her rotations with the other Emissaries. She'll go to Billaba next, then Ventress, then him, and then she'll be ready to strike out on her own and take up her own assignments the way they all do in the end. She's the new thirteenth they'd been waiting for. She's the best replacement they could possibly have found. 

"Your predecessor gave me this crystal," he says, and he looks at her sharply. "You know who that was." 

She sits herself back up, suddenly more serious though she feigns disinterest. She knows who she replaced, whose empty place she was chosen to take, whose empty room she sleeps in; she is not disinterested. 

"Kenobi," she replies. She says the name like she knows the story, because everyone does.

When Kenobi left the Order, they interrogated Maul for weeks. He didn't blame them for it then and he doesn't blame them for it now - he was their only lead on an otherwise cold trail. He didn't blame them but he couldn't lead them where it was the traitor had gone, which was their eventual conclusion, and after a brief but necessary stay in the medical bay, he returned to his work. He knew what the next mission would be, and he didn't refuse it, just as he had never refused any other. Until he's dead, he knows every mission will be Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Of course, no matter what the interrogators say, everyone in the temple believes he knows more about that night than he's willing to say. He can see it on the council members' faces when he speaks with them and it's there with his fellow Emissaries, too. It's on Ahsoka's face right now.

"Why did he give you that?" she asks. 

He moves. He kneels, sitting back on the heels of his worn leather boots - he tosses the clear crystal up into the air, flips it like a coin, and it catches the light before he palms it again. 

"I don't know," he tells her, because the truth of it can't hurt just this once, and then he stands and smooths down his tunic. "But I think one day I'll find out."

\---

"Do you remember how we met?" Kenobi asked, that night, as they stood face to face in the corridor outside the temple's cells. Maul understood what was happening. Kenobi clearly saw he understood.

"It was the Choosing of Ways," Maul replied. 

Their tradition is, as it has been for centuries, that all Sith stationed within a practical distance of their temple on Coruscant return to attend the Choosing of Ways. It happens once per year, every year. It's an important event in the Sith calendar, perhaps the most important day in an Initiate's life so far, though often deathly dull for all the other attendees. But Maul has to admit there was nothing particularly dull about Kenobi's year. 

Exceptions are made for the sick or injured, but most of the sick and the injured put on their robes and make the effort to attend despite that, unless they're knocking on death's door or floating in bacta. Exceptions are made for the Vitals - the Sith medics - treating them, and for the Peacekeeper division that guards the temple, and Initiates who are not of Choosing age remain behind in their dormitories, but all others in the vicinity attend. 

There are thousands of them, the bulk of all Sith in the galaxy, all filing in through one of several grand entranceways to sit in sections according to their Way, in the temple's great stone hall that's stood since the days of the Force Wars. A member of the Sith council then takes the stage to lead the year's proceedings and they call the Initiates up one by one to make their choice. In Maul's year, Mace Windu presided. In Kenobi's, it was the Emperor's right hand, Count Dooku. 

Maul sat alone in the Emissaries' section. Theirs is the only one of the five Sith Ways that's limited at all in terms of numbers: by tradition even more ancient than the Choosing itself, they're no more than thirteen at any one time. Maul's brothers and sisters were all otherwise engaged and so Maul attended alone, as he had the previous year and the year before that, since he'd been chosen himself four years earlier, though it wasn't exactly unexpected. Most Emissaries spend little time at the temple, even between assignments. Before Kenobi, Maul spent most of his time there alone. 

The ceremony opened with nine clear, uncontroversial choices in a row: seven new Peacekeepers - always the largest Way by a hefty margin, then a Vital and a Guardian. The tenth was somewhat more contentious and Maul watched, amused, entertained, as a full-blown duel broke out between a Consul representative and a Guardian. The Guardian eventually ceded victory at the point of a lightsaber and the ceremony moved on. At twenty-seven, three separate Peacekeeper subdivisions fought each other for a promising Initiate. At thirty-three, the Guardians squabbled with the Vitals till the Guardian herself actually needed a Vital. Then, at forty-one, the Consuls, the Guardians and the Peacekeepers each sent a representative down to the stage. 

The Initiate in question, standing there in his black Sith robes, was Obi-Wan Kenobi. As the Peacekeeper drew his saber, Kenobi drew a knife and pressed its sharp point straight into the Peacekeeper's trachea. That was the moment Maul was sure: when Initiate Kenobi put a blade in a Sith Master just so he could make his choice himself, and he looked up hotly to where the Emissaries' section was, Maul knew for sure. 

"I will not be fought for," Kenobi said, as the hall went silent. "I've made my choice." And it was bold because they all know what refusal means - there is no mechanism by means of which an Initiate or anyone else may leave the Order once they've joined it and so promising as he was, sought-after as he was, refusal by his chosen Way would have seen Kenobi join the Menials, the Sith's servant class. Maul almost considered it, just for the briefest of moments, once Kenobi's future rested solely in his hands, and he knows the other Emissaries wouldn't have questioned his choice. They'd left it for him to make. He spoke for all of them.

There'd been no question on Maul's day: six Emissaries had come for him and he'd seen them stand as he stepped up to the stage. Master Billaba was the one who'd spoken the words that day and Master Windu, a former Emissary himself before he'd taken his seat on the Council, congratulated him as he made his way to join them. But they'd left this choice to him and only him. Sometimes he wonders if even then they had their doubts about Obi-Wan Kenobi, or if their absence really was just a sign of their preoccupation. The Emissaries are rarely inactive, but they're also not known to lack perception.

"I will not be fought for," Kenobi said again, as the the Vitals hurried the bleeding Peacekeeper from the stage. And Maul laughed out loud. The hall was silent so the thousands heard him, and they watched him as he stood. 

"Kenobi," Maul called, and his voice carried, and it echoed on the stone. "Are you my equal?"

"Yes," Kenobi replied. His tone was vehement, like he meant it, like he'd rehearsed this moment for years, and perhaps he had. Many did, only to their disappointment. "And more."

"Are you my rival?"

"Yes," Kenobi replied. "And more."

"Are you my brother?"

"Yes," he said. "And more."

"I believe you are," Maul said, after the briefest pause, and he gestured to the seat beside him. "So take your place."

The whole hall watched Kenobi leave the stage and climb the stairs. The whole hall watched Kenobi grip Maul's arm in greeting and then take his place there next to him, before the ceremony moved on. The other Ways have rituals of initiation, pretty robes they put on to say nice words behind closed doors - Maul thinks that's because it reassures them and makes their new acolytes feel special. The Emissaries say their words in front of everyone, no ritual required. They do not court new members and they do not promise favours. Everyone knows they're special. Obi-Wan Kenobi definitely was. Maul had known that for months by then. He'd kept an eye on him.

Even now, after all this time, Maul knows he would have fought for him and the others wouldn't have had a prayer of winning. Part of him thinks he would have liked to show him he was chosen and not just accepted, and part of him's sorry he didn't get a chance.

Every part of him thinks Kenobi would have liked to see that. 

\---

"Not then," Kenobi said. "Before that."

"Then you mean the day I came to your combat class."

The other Ways all train their new acolytes, but the Emissaries don't. There are no juniors or seniors, no _apprentices_ \- once chosen, they are equal. 

"So, are you the one who'll direct my training?" Kenobi asked, as they left the hall after the Choosing. The others gave them the requisite space. That is the respect the Emissaries' Way commands. 

"You'll direct your own training," Maul replied. "You have a strong foundation. If there's a skill you need, if you want _training_ , you'll find it yourself."

Kenobi nodded. He was smart; Maul believed he understood. All Initiates train until their nineteenth year, until eighteen standard years of age, and then they choose a Way - for those years, they attend classes at the Sith Academy there in the temple and they learn all common fundamentals they might need for any Way. And, seven months prior to Kenobi's Choosing, Maul had attended a senior-level advanced combat class and fulfilled all of his required annual teaching hours in one swift block. 

Four students had attended, those that the Academy's combat master deemed most able and best prepared, and for the three-week duration of the class, Maul instructed them in Jar'Kai, fighting with dual blades. Kenobi studied the hardest and learned the quickest. He practiced the most frequently - in the evenings, after hours, Maul found him in the saber hall when he went to practice there himself. He let Kenobi watch him as he stepped through each kata of each form night by night, pretending that he wasn't there, pretending that he wasn't enjoying it. He let Kenobi follow him, through forms four and five and six, pretending that he didn't see. He watched him stop the next night, as he began with Juyo, form seven. 

"Aren't you with me tonight?" Maul asked, the first time he'd spoken in all eight nights, or even acknowledged his presence in any way at all. 

"I don't know form seven," Kenobi replied, bluntly, his hands on his hips. 

Maul tilted his head as he looked at him. "Do you want to learn?"

They both knew the form was forbidden until the combat master gave his approval for it. They both knew Maul's punishment if they were caught would be a quick slap on the wrist at the very most, but Kenobi would be struck from the Academy and sent directly to the Menials, to spend his days serving food or sewing clothes. It was a risk, and the risk was all Kenobi's. 

"Teach me," Kenobi said, fiercely, and so Maul did exactly that. For the thirteen nights that followed, he taught him the basics of the form, before the real class concluded. And then Maul went back to his real work. 

"Teach him Juyo," he told the combat master as he left on the final day. "He's as ready as I was. Don't make me go over your head." And at the Academy's next tournament, Kenobi was the winner. He fought a different form in each round, just the way that Maul had once, and when he switched to Juyo for the final, Maul found himself smiling despite himself. Kenobi wasn't as good as Maul was himself, he wasn't as good as Maul had been at the Academy, but he thought maybe he'd get there - he hadn't had a good rival in years, and he remembers how much he wanted one. Even then, he wanted to believe Kenobi was that one. It was in the way he moved. It was in the way he let the Force take him.

After the Choosing, he continued to improve, though Maul saw Kenobi only rarely over the following year as he switched from Emissary to Emissary and from mission to mission. He spent three weeks with Fetter on Corellia, searching out a Force-sensitive who'd learned to break people's minds, then four with Ky on Ryloth researching the last of the Twi'lek Jedi Masters. He spent three months with Billaba searching moons and asteroids for Jedi holocrons along the Kessel Run and a week shutting down a kyber crystal smuggling operation with Asajj Ventress. They would have been missions for the other Ways, the Consuls or the Peacekeepers or the Guardians, except for one common factor: the Council suspected Jedi involvement in every case. Perhaps the Emissaries really had been emissaries once, but by then what they were was Jedi hunters, amongst other things. They were the elite. They did what no one else was able to.

Maul thinks sometimes he could have been satisfied to be a Peacekeeper. He could have dedicated his life to the lightsaber - he'd been considered a master of it even before the time of his Choosing, but he knows there's always more to learn. That's why he returns to the temple between his assignments - so he can read the old texts and study the old holocrons and _learn_ , because he knows he can do better. The Force tells him so, when he listens to it. He knows that's why Kenobi started to return between assignments, too, after that first year, after the traditional rotations were complete. 

The final rotation was with Maul, just like Ahsoka's will be soon. They flew out to Hoth and they sparred along the way, in the ship's cargo hold, one calling out a form for them to switch to, then it was the other's turn. It was the most fun Maul had had in as long as he could think of, hopping from the graceful bladework of form two to the acrobatics of form four and then the unpredictability of form seven, feeling the surge of the Force inside him from it. Kenobi had improved and Maul could feel it as they moved. Kenobi had _changed_ , and he could feel that, too. It wasn't just the fact that his hair had grown out of the Initiate's traditional close crop and his boots were scuffed and his long cloak's hems were worn. It was like he knew the choice he'd made had been the right one and not just the riskiest or the most prestigious. It was like his arrogance had been tempered into confidence by the work he'd done. Kenobi wasn't an Initiate any longer; he really was an Emissary. Maul could have been proud if he'd allowed himself that.

When they were done, stripped to the waist from the ship's heat and exertion, breathless and slick with sweat, Maul laughed out loud and Kenobi stumbled into him with a smile spread out across his face. The fight had made them giddy, but as Kenobi's fingertips traced the sharp zigzags of Maul's tattoos, his laughter died out. Kenobi's smile faded. 

"Is it true that the Emperor gave you these himself?" Kenobi asked. 

Maul nodded faintly, inching forward without really meaning to, inching Kenobi back as his two hearts beat quicker in his chest. "Yes," he replied. "After he found me on Dathomir and brought me to the temple, he gave me these."

"Did it hurt?" Kenobi asked, his fingertips trailing lower. They reached the waist of Maul's trousers. Maul took Kenobi's wrists in his hands and he pinned him to the wall in one swift, sharp movement. 

"Yes," he replied. "They hurt. I think that was part of the point."

"Part of the training?" 

"Something like that, yes."

They were so close together he could feel the shift of Kenobi's muscles as he breathed. He could feel the warmth of his skin and see the wide dilation of his pupils in eyes that were so unlike his own. It would have been so easy to take it one step further and blame it on the adrenaline of the fight or the way the Force seemed to crackle in the air between them, when they both gave in to the strength and pleasure required by the Juyo style. It would have been easy and no one would have known or cared even if they had known - he knew even then that next to no one cared that the rules said sex between Sith was outlawed and he's never exactly considered himself a stickler for the rules besides that, but not fucking your immediate colleagues had somehow always seemed like an important one. He let go of Kenobi's wrists. He stepped back abruptly. 

"You need a shower," he said. "We're almost there." And Kenobi frowned at him for a moment, like he was on the verge of an objection, like he was on the verge of pushing, but then he nodded sharply and he walked away. 

"Don't forget to shower, too," he called back over his shoulder, his composure already returned. "I'm not running around an ice planet with you smelling like a herd of bantha."

Maul chuckled. Kenobi disappeared into the showers. 

He resolutely did not think about joining him there. 

\---

"Before that," Kenobi said. "Not long before, but before that." 

"Then no, I don't remember."

Kenobi sighed. He ran one hand through his hair; he had the other on the hilt of his new lightsaber. 

"You were in the Archives and a group of Peacekeepers came in," he said. "One tripped on his own cloak and spilled his drink all over the table. It soaked into the scrolls you were reading. You asked who'd done it. They were scared. You asked if it was _him_. He said no, and you said--"

"I said, _the Force knows you_ ," Maul said. "I didn't know you were there."

Kenobi smiled wryly. "I was there," he said. "It was the first time I'd heard that. You say it all the time. I've thought about it a lot recently."

Years passed, after the Choosing, and after the mission to Hoth. Two years, five years, ten. They attended the Choosing together year by year, sat side by side in their robes on the otherwise empty Emissaries' benches though Kenobi had been their new thirteenth and none of the rest had left them since, either by death or promotion. The eldest had died of natural causes three years before Maul's Choosing and the youngest had died just a few months before that, of something substantially less natural, so Maul and Kenobi were twelve and thirteen, four years apart. There was no space for any more. They didn't see any Initiates there that were worthy of their Way, even so. 

Years passed. They met every few months back in the Emissaries' quarters in the temple, in between assignments; they ate together in the commissary, studied together in the Archives, sparred together in the saber hall, and Maul tried not to recall what had so nearly happened between them so very many times since that first time on the way to Hoth. They'd pushed each other up against stone walls, pinned each other down to floors, wrapped their hands around each other's throats, and Maul can still recall the dark, breathless way Kenobi made him feel, like making him feel that way was a sport he played before he flashed a smile and disappeared. Maul knew where Kenobi went - not specifically, not most times, but generally speaking. He wasn't discreet about the other Sith he screwed. 

As for Maul, he fucked non-Sith human males who looked something like Kenobi, angrily, against walls in dusty spaceports, back rooms of bars, cheap hostels. Once they knew he was Sith, they practically threw themselves at him. He called it progress but knew it wasn't at all. 

Kenobi gained a reputation. Most other Sith feared Maul, the Emissary who kept himself to himself and rivalled Mace Windu with a lightsaber in his hand, but they were captivated by the charismatic Kenobi. Where Maul was dispatched for a quiet hunt or a quieter assassination, Kenobi specialised in spectacle. Maul's work was to subtly undermine the Jedi power base and Kenobi sent loud messages - loud _warnings_ \- that everyone could hear. Maul could see how both things were needed. He didn't need to be popular, even if Kenobi was. Years passed. They were colleagues, equals, rivals, brothers, nothing more. They were different, but not _that_ different.

Sith Emissaries generally don't work in groups. They're not chosen for their exemplary teamwork or for cooperation or their sense of fair play, so sending the two of them seemed to Maul to be a strange decision. Possibly even a foolish decision, but Dooku takes his orders from the Emperor directly and no one questions Emperor Palpatine, at least not if their immediate ambitions involve living past sundown. So, Maul and Kenobi boarded a ship together for the first time since Hoth, for the first time in more than a decade, closer to fifteen. They made the jump to hyperspace and they headed for the Outer Rim. They set coordinates for Tatooine. 

"Are you still fucking that librarian?" Maul asked, not quite casually, as they sat in the cockpit and watched the stars streak by. It was a frequent topic of conversation, though Maul still couldn't honestly say why he did that to himself. Kenobi never seemed to mind answering; they knew each other well.

"They prefer to be called Guardians," Kenobi pointed out, with a sideways glance in his direction. "Guardians of knowledge, I think it's meant to be."

"Librarians, in other words."

Kenobi shrugged. "Librarians, in other words," he agreed. "And no. I'm fucking the Peacekeeper combat instructor. Do you know Teythan?"

Maul snorted. "The big Twi'lek that's missing bits of his lekku?"

"Then you _do_ know Teythan. He's helping me with my Djem So."

"I'm sure that's all he's helping with," Maul said, and he snickered derisively as he left the cockpit. When he lay down on his bunk farther aft, he definitely wasn't thinking about Kenobi and the big purple saber instructor who made them both look tiny in comparison. He wasn't thinking about Kenobi and the actually tiny Tholothian Guardian. Sometimes he liked to think he lived vicariously through Kenobi's thinly-veiled tales of conquest, but mostly he knew he was really imagining Obi-Wan Kenobi when he went to bed at night. Sometimes, he regretted choosing him; if only Kenobi had been a Peacekeeper, their paths might never have crossed again. If only Maul had been a Peacekeeper, he could have dedicated himself to combat and never imagined Kenobi's bare skin against his.

Neither of them had ever been to Tatooine and when they landed in the desert, miles outside the largest spaceport so their arrival could remain unnoticed at least briefly, the hot, parched air and beating twin suns hit them hard - ice planets suddenly seemed infinitely preferable, for all Kenobi joked about frostbite in their extremities. But the target was an important one: intelligence said Qui-Gon Jinn was there on Tatooine. 

"Qui-Gon Jinn?" Kenobi had said when they'd received their orders, like he couldn't quite believe his ears despite everything they'd seen and done over the years. They'd destroyed cities. They'd killed Jedi. Frankly, there weren't many things they hadn't killed at one point or another. "I thought he was dead."

"So did we," Dooku had replied. "Find out if the rumour is true. Bring him to me if it is." And once Dooku had left in those long, sweeping strides and a swish of his cloak, Kenobi had wondered aloud if he meant to kill Jinn or try to rehabilitate him somehow. After all, he'd been the Count's apprentice in the Sith Consuls. Maul didn't tell him he didn't think rehabilitation was possible for a Sith who'd turned from the Dark Side, especially not for a Jedi. He thought they'd be bringing him back to Coruscant to die. 

The first day after they landed on Tatooine was dedicated to reconnaissance. They split up and they worked their way around the spaceports, making sure their notion of the space they were in was accurate, and then they went into town. Mos Eisley was far from the worst place Maul had ever been but once word got around that they were Sith Peacekeepers searching for a band of big-time spice smugglers, the atmosphere around them relaxed considerably. They weren't interested in Mos Eisley's relatively petty criminals so it was business as usual for all concerned. And at the end of the day they went back to the ship and Maul stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower, to wash away the sweat and dust. 

Kenobi came in after him. Kenobi came in _behind_ him and he knew it was him thanks to the hum in the Force that he'd always felt around him, since that first time in the saber hall. Which was good, because he didn't recognise the feel of the hands that settled at his hips. That wasn't a way they'd touched before.

"What are you doing?" Maul asked, expecting his tone to sound warning but the words just came out shrill. 

"Don't tell me that's not obvious," Kenobi replied, his mouth right by Maul's ear. Kenobi moved closer. Kenobi's bare chest touched against Maul's bare back. Kenobi's arms snaked around Maul's waist and Kenobi's mouth pressed to the nape of Maul's neck and Kenobi's thighs pressed to the back of Maul's. Kenobi shifted his hips and the length of his cock pressed to the cleft of Maul's arse and one of Kenobi's hands glided down, over Maul's chest, over his abdomen, down to wrap around his flaccid cock. It wasn't soft for long; Kenobi chuckled lowly as it started to stiffen against his palm. Maul put out his hands and leaned heavily against the wall. He closed his eyes. He hung his head. 

"What are you doing?" Maul asked again. He didn't sound any more certain then that he wanted to hear an answer. 

"You're the one who insisted we come back to the ship," Kenobi pointed out, almost sounding casual about it but there was a strain to it underneath that Maul was sure he could hear. Kenobi squeezed the head of Maul's cock against the palm of his hand and Maul groaned out loud, so Kenobi did it again before he wrapped his fingers back around the shaft. 

"This wasn't what I had in mind," Maul said. 

"It wasn't?"

"No." 

"Then it seems we have very different definitions of _let's go back to the ship_."

"Apparently."

Kenobi clucked his tongue as if to say _well, isn't that interesting_ , and Maul waited for him to stop but he didn't. He stroked Maul's cock languidly and he squeezed his balls and his fingertips strayed behind them, found a spot along his perineum that made Maul thrum from head to toe when he pressed tight and rubbed at it. 

"What are you _doing_?" Maul asked, _again_ , and this time he sounded loud and harsh and almost angry. 

"I'm sorry, did you want me to stop?" Kenobi replied, still not stopping, and the ridiculous answer was he did and he didn't. He wanted him to keep going, to touch him, stroke him, rock his hips against him till they both came under the shower spray with his two hearts beating in counterpoint. He wanted to turn the tables, push Kenobi up against the wall or down against the floor and fuck him just the way he'd been imagining for years by that point. He wanted to suck his cock and kiss his mouth or maybe punch him in it and they'd fight, still naked, there in the shower, no Force involved, till they were fucking again. _That_ was what he wanted. 

"Yes, I want you to stop," Maul said instead, with ten times more conviction than he felt. And so Kenobi stepped away. 

"All you had to do was say so," he said, hotly, suddenly tensely. He frowned, his hands tightening into fists at his sides, then he shook his head and shook out his hands. "That's all you ever have to do." And Kenobi turned on his heel and left. Maul growled under his breath and he turned and crumpled all the metal cabinets in the fresher with the Force, seething, baring his teeth. He sank to his knees on the floor under the spray and he wrapped one hand around his cock and when he came, angry, frustrated, it was Kenobi's hand he was imagining. It wasn't the first time, but he told himself it would be the last. 

It wasn't. The tension in the Force between them crawled under Maul's skin and made him mean during the day and agitated at night. He brought himself off in the shower or in his bunk once they got back to the ship, imagining beating him bloody, imagining fucking him almost too hard. He would have liked to think the heat and the suns and the fucking dust that got everywhere were just making him crazy, but he knew that wasn't it. Whatever this was, it had been coming on for years. 

It took six days before they finished winding their way through Mos Eisley and Mos Espa and all the other spaceports and outposts that covered the fucking wasteland of a planet. It took two more days for them to be sure they believed the intelligence they'd gathered, but in the end they did. Jinn was in the canyons. He was alive, and they knew where he was. And when they went there, to the house in the canyons past the mesa, past the Jawas and bands of Tusken Raiders taking pot-shots that Maul easily deflected with his saber while Kenobi drove the speeder, Jinn walked out into the dying light of the planet's second sun. 

He stood there in the green glow of a Jedi lightsaber that had always felt so different to Maul from Sith red, and he said, "What took you so long?"

Jinn deactivated his lightsaber and he tossed it down at their feet. He let them take him in, in shackles, and lock him into their ship's brig. 

"Why did he do that?" Kenobi asked, once they'd taken off and set the autopilot for Coruscant. "It's like he _wanted_ to be caught."

Maul shrugged tightly. He didn't know and he told himself he resolutely didn't care - the Jedi could do whatever he wanted for whatever ridiculous reason he did it because in the end all that mattered was they'd completed their mission and were taking him back to Dooku. And, more than that, the tension strung between the two of them hadn't eased the way he'd hoped it might with Jinn's capture. He'd hoped a good fight with a worthy opponent - and for all he'd betrayed the Order, Jinn was by all accounts still _worthy_ \- might purge it from his system. He'd expected a fight. He'd _wanted_ a fight. He likes the hum of a lightsaber and the crackle as two blades meet. He likes the thrill that runs through him as he moves, how the Force fills him up as he slips into form seven, how like a weapon he becomes when he allows it to take over. But the Jedi had surrendered and all of Maul's heady anticipation just turned to more frustration. He left Kenobi where he was and went into the hold; he drew his saberstaff and he activated it, and then there was Kenobi. He had the Jedi's green saber in his hands. He didn't have to say a word. They fought. 

Ordinarily, they would have been more evenly matched, after all those years of Kenobi's higher learning, but the different weight and shape and feel of the saber that wasn't his seemed to throw him off just a little. Three minutes in and they paused to pull off their tunics, stripping to the waist for freer movement in the usual style, but it didn't help Kenobi. Seven minutes in, Maul disarmed him, sent the green saber skittering away across the ground, and he slammed him up against the nearest bulkhead with the Force. He did it twice, harder the second time, then he held him there, and he expected retaliation but all Kenobi did was bare his teeth and say, "If you want to hurt me, you could at least use your hands." 

Maul almost left him there. He almost turned and stalked away but somehow something stopped him and he couldn't go. He held Kenobi there against the bulkhead with the Force as he walked toward him instead of away. He barred one forearm across Kenobi's bare collarbones. He pressed his other hand down hard to the front of Kenobi's trousers. He leaned in. 

"Is this what you want?" he said, grimacing, his voice harsh. 

"Yes," Kenobi replied. "Do you want me to believe this isn't what you want every time you go out and screw a man who looks almost like me?"

"You followed me."

"Of course I did."

"You're meant to be my brother." 

"And I am," Kenobi said. He hitched one leg over Maul's hip and pulled him in, one leather knee boot over the curve of Maul's backside. He pulled him in tight, making him hiss in a breath through his teeth. "And more, just like the vow says. How much more is up to you."

He meant to walk away, but he didn't. One moment he was glaring into Kenobi's flushed face and the next thing he was kissing him, he was fucking _kissing_ him, his fingers in his hair, and Kenobi hopped up, wrapped his legs around Maul's waist and raked his nails down hard over the back of his neck. Maul groaned against Kenobi's throat, pushing him up against the wall, grazed his neck with his teeth, made him gasp and grind his hips against him. They were both already hard from it and they pushed together, gripped too hard at arms and thighs with the Force in them and between them and around them and then they came from it, both of them, bewilderingly without even undressing the rest of the way, breathless and angry. He breathed harshly at the crook of Kenobi's neck and Kenobi slipped his feet back to the ground and Maul leaned there against him, his palms flat to the bulkhead, his forehead to Kenobi's shoulder, the horn over his temple pressed into Kenobi's neck, wishing they hadn't just done what they'd just done. 

"Shower," Kenobi said, commandingly, and he pushed and pulled him along with him, and Maul undressed, resentfully obedient. Then Kenobi's hands were on him, and his mouth was on him, tracing his tattoos, making him shiver despite the warmth of the water pouring over them. He didn't let him push him away. He could almost have forgotten the rule they were breaking and the Jedi in the brig. He could almost have forgotten how he'd always liked to think he had an unbreakable personal code, and he'd just broken it.

He told himself it would be the only time he did. Even then, he knew he was a liar.

\---

"I looked it up," Kenobi said. "It's an old Jedi saying."

"Am I supposed to be shocked by that? I've read at least as many books as you have."

"I just think it's interesting that you chose it," Kenobi said. "I asked Jinn about it, about what it really means. He told me I already knew."

Maul snorted, not sure whether he was amused or appalled. "That sounds just like something a Jedi would say."

Kenobi shrugged. "He wasn't wrong," he said.

When they returned to Coruscant, they marched Qui-Gon Jinn down to the cells in chains. Dooku congratulated them. The Council thanked them. The Emperor called them to him and he gave his commendations to them personally. It was as if they'd done the impossible and Jinn hadn't just offered himself up without a fight. Maul felt faintly cheated, and faintly fraudulent with it. 

He expected a new assignment to come quickly, at least for himself if not for Kenobi, but it didn't come. Kenobi, who had always excelled in that particular area, was tasked with Jinn's interrogation and spent his days in the cellblock far beneath the temple, and Maul read or he practiced or he stalked the halls like some kind of restless ghost of Sith gone by. After the first week, pretending nothing had happened on the ship but knowing it had, he agreed to put in his annual teaching hours and spent his days striking fear into a class of mixed ability senior Initiates. It helped, to an extent, when he really threw himself into it. Some nights, once he'd walked back to the Emissaries' quarters from the Academy's saber hall, he was too exhausted to touch himself even when he wanted to. 

On the eleventh night, Kenobi came in later than usual. Maul was kneeling on the floor in quiet meditation that was all too easily disturbed by Kenobi's arrival, though he kept his eyes firmly closed as Kenobi seated himself on one of their half-comfortable couches. 

Kenobi said nothing, which should have rung alarm bells immediately. Kenobi said nothing and if it hadn't been for that persistent murmur in the Force he'd always felt in Kenobi's presence, perhaps he really could have resumed his meditation. But the murmur got louder. He could almost hear it as well as feel it, throbbing in his head and in his chest and in his cock, and then he could _feel_ it, a whisper of a touch against his skin beneath his clothes, faint at first but then bolder. It was insubstantial fingers of an insubstantial hand, tracing the line of his throat, down his chest, over his abdomen, over the inside of his parted thighs. He could feel himself start to stiffen as it wrapped around the shaft of his cock, as it eased back his foreskin, as it teased hotly at the tip. He felt it trail between his cheeks, too, parting them, rubbing at the rim of the hole there, between them. He felt his stomach tighten. 

"What are you doing?" he said, with his eyes still closed and his voice understandably strained. 

"Do it to me," Kenobi said as he let that invisible hand evaporate, not even close to answering the question, but that seemed fine because his voice was just as strained as Maul's was. "It's the same thing as always. Just less like a hammer and more like a hand." 

He had no intention of doing it, at least not until he opened his eyes with the intention of telling him so. But Kenobi was kneeling there on the floor not far away, sitting back on his heels just like Maul was except he was stripped down to his bare skin as well as hard, the look on his face all anticipation. Before he could stop himself, before he even thought to _try_ to stop himself, Maul reached out with the Force. He nudged him with it, by his shoulder, and Kenobi grinned. He ran it down Kenobi's chest, down to his cock, and Kenobi groaned, and he should've stopped but the way Kenobi was _looking_ at him, and how he gripped at his own thighs to try to keep still, and he wasn't technically _touching_ him...he kept going till Kenobi's eyes closed and his breath hitched and his head tilted back and he came, all his muscles tensing so incredibly, without him ever really having touched him at all. And Maul stood and he left him there before he could attempt to return the favour. 

It happened again the next night and the night after that, right there in the otherwise empty communal living quarters where honestly, Maul had barely seen another Emissary in years. If he hadn't spoken to them via secure commlink, briefly run into Billaba on Malastare the year before and been sent to make a brief show of force to what was left of the Nightsisters on Dathomir with Ventress, he might have been tempted into existential conspiracy. 

It happened again the night after that, and the night after that, Kenobi on his knees and Maul's fingers digging hard into his own thighs as he concentrated. It was difficult, bending the Force to his will that way, shaping it, moving it, harder than brushing aside half a droid battalion or lifting an entire sinking spacecraft out of sucking quicksand, and at first it felt like going into surgery with a mallet instead of a blade. 

The fourteenth night, he was exhausted. He was mentally wiped out by the class he'd taught and when Kenobi came in, he could barely hold a thought in his head, let alone concentrate on it. He tried to reach out and couldn't and Kenobi stood and came closer, tugged him to his feet and told him, "You know, we could always do this the old-fashioned way."

"Or you could go play your games with Teythan," Maul replied, tersely. Kenobi reached for his arm and he flinched away with a pointed look. "Don't touch me," he said sharply. "I'm not your latest conquest. Go find someone else."

"I want _you_."

"I don't want _you_."

Kenobi raised his brows. He set his hands at his bare hips. "Well, we both know that's a lie," he said, flatly. "You want to play with your lightsaber half the time and play with me for the rest of it." 

"Is _that_ what I want?"

"Yes!" Kenobi balled his hands to fists at his sides. "And all these years, I don't know why you won't just do it." 

"You don't exactly seem to have trouble finding alternative company."

"Was I supposed to wait for you instead? You, the idiot who's been fucking every blue-eyed, brown-haired human male in the galaxy but me?" The look on Kenobi's face was furious and Maul could _feel_ his anger, in the air, in the Force. "I chose you. I didn't choose the Emissaries. I chose _you_."

Kenobi pushed him. He pushed him bodily with both hands and as Maul staggered back he lashed out with the Force and so did Kenobi and then they were up against each other, and Kenobi was pulling at Maul's clothes, _tearing_ at them, and he let him. He let him strip him naked and push him up against the nearest wall and he let him _kiss_ him, leaning there against him, chest to chest. He let him wrap one hand around his cock and squeeze. 

"You know, we're not getting any younger," Kenobi muttered, his mouth moving against Maul's throat. "It's been _sixteen years_. Do you want to live like this? Do you want me to go out and pick up the first red-skinned Zabrak I can find?"

The idea hit him viscerally. He'd never seen Kenobi with a Zabrak, definitely not a male and not even a female, and he'd never even thought about it before but couldn't stand the thought of it then. He gripped at Kenobi's shoulders. He wound the fingers of one hand into Kenobi's thick hair and he pulled tight and he kissed him, roughly. That seemed to Maul like a good enough answer. It seemed to be that way to Kenobi, too, as he kissed him back. 

At some point, they made it to Maul's room and they sprawled on the bed, Kenobi straddling Maul's hips. He slicked Maul's cock with the oil he kept for something like that purpose and he settled down, shuffled, smiled his rakish smile Maul was sure made other people weak at the knees as he pressed the blunt tip of Maul's cock to the hole between his cheeks. Maul gripped at the sheets as Kenobi pushed down, as Kenobi penetrated himself on the length of him, pushed him up inside himself all hot and tight and pulsing with it as he spread both hands over the tattoos that covered Maul's chest. Then he shifted his hips and he groaned out loud and so did Maul, unable to stop himself, his hands skimming Kenobi's straining thighs, settling at his waist. He'd wanted Obi-Wan Kenobi for the best part of sixteen years and there he was. All he had to do was let himself have him.

He tipped him onto his back and he pushed straight back into him, and Kenobi laughed a breathless, joyful laugh as he wrapped his legs around Maul's waist and pulled him deeper. He had him like that, hard and deep and face to face, the Force all sparks over their skin. When he came in him, he could have sworn he almost saw them. 

And after, Kenobi traced the edges of Maul's horns with his fingertips, pressed his mouth there by the base of two or three of them and made him shiver. Maul rubbed his eyes with one hand. 

"Tell me to stay," Kenobi said. 

Maul chuckled wryly. He traced the curve of Kenobi's bottom lip with one thumb. 

"I won't tell you to go," he said. 

\---

He's holding a kyber crystal in his hand. Ahsoka doesn't really want it - she just wants the story that goes with it. He might tell her, but he's not sure how it ends. He goes into his room instead; the time for telling tales is over, for now.

They had a full month together in the temple before either of them received a new assignment, and when it happened they were sent to opposite sides of the galaxy. Maul spent ten highly uncomfortable days soaked to his skin wearing breathing apparatus on Mon Cala and Kenobi was sent to Rattatak when Ventress would probably have been the smarter choice. Kenobi was assigned to Corellia after that while Maul went to Hosnian Prime, and so it continued. They met there on Coruscant once every two or three months and the Force between them fucking _burned_ with it. Honestly, Maul wishes he'd been stronger. Maybe if he'd never given in, he could have stopped him.

" _The Force knows you_ ," Kenobi said, in the corridor outside the cells. Maul's still not sure how he knew to be there; maybe that was the Force, too, or maybe he'd just known him so long it was obvious. "It knows all of us. It knows the things we've done."

"The Force doesn't judge."

"Maybe it should. I saw the way Jinn looked at me. I see the way people look at us. We're not meant to be like this."

Maul sighed. "You've been listening to Jinn," he said. He couldn't find a way to say how disappointed he was in that, but somehow he couldn't feel betrayed by it. Not the way he knew the others would.

Kenobi smiled wryly. "Well, you always told me to find my own training."

"I didn't exactly mean with the Jedi."

Kenobi shrugged. They could both hear the Peacekeepers' boots echoing down the corridors and when Kenobi activated his saber, it glowed Jedi blue. The colour was like a knife to the gut. It was like a sick jolt of something that couldn't've been hope but that felt a lot like it. 

"Go," Maul said, scowling. "They're coming."

"Come with me."

Maul activated his saberstaff, just one end of it in recognition of the narrowness of the corridor outside the cells. It glowed red just like Kenobi's old one had. He'd always found it comforting, the colour, how they matched, but their colours clashed.

" _Go_ ," he said. "Or I'll kill you myself."

Kenobi shouted out loud, the look on his face somewhere between stricken and appalled, though Maul wasn't sure how he could have ever thought he'd leave with him. And as he turned to run, with Jinn, he tossed Maul a kyber crystal. One that had never been used. One that had never been broken. 

He's holding a kyber crystal in his hand. Sometimes he wonders what colour it would be if he built himself a new saber - would it be blue like Kenobi's, maybe green like Jinn's, or would he have to force it? Would he even know till he drew it that first time? Sometimes he holds the crystal in his hand and he listens to it; it belongs to him like if he'd fetched it from Ilum himself, like if he'd let it choose him like the texts say the Jedi do, but the kyber knows his indecision. He knows more about that night than he's told anyone, but he doesn't know how the story ends. 

He'll find him; he knows that. He's just not sure what will happen when he does. 

He'll find him, and if he lights the saber and the blade glows red then he'll know what to do. 

He'll find him. And if the blade glows blue then he'll let Kenobi decide. 

As he lies down on the bed they sometimes shared, as he closes his eyes to go to sleep tonight, he's honestly not sure which he hopes for most.


End file.
